"Well, same as last night, I'm thinking that I wouldn't be too missed if I don't return at all tonight...I guess at this point there's only trouble if I return. You have any ideas of where I can rest for the night?"

"Truth be told, I wouldn't mind having the company in the dungeon this evening," she said and dismounted.

"Let's walk the rest of the way, these horses will head straight to the livery with a good spank on the rump." She began to unstrap her backpack from the horse.

"Tomorrow morning I need to wake early though," she continued talking while hefting the backpack over her shoulders. He could tell that the poison had weakened her, for she appeared weary despite her effort to speak with authority. "I think I will speak to one of the guilds contacts. See if I can get some feathers ruffled in the Lakeshore Guard. At the very least get some papers shuffled in order to mask the trail we made this evening, perhaps even divert it away from the two of us."

She held onto the horses reigns, knowing that they would want to move quickly another direction after letting them free. Her other hand played with the hole in the center of her shirt.

"Perhaps we should report the horses as stolen?" Temmit suggested. "That would help to divert attention from us on this end. The only thing to address then would be the guard that we spoke to up in Lakeshore, and he only saw us at night, in a snow storm. We might be covered from that end anyway."

He seemed to consider himself for a while. "And don't worry: I'll awaken you early."

“I don’t want some unknown in the Guard contingent able to come back to us for further questioning though. I do like the idea however. I will ask my contact to have a subordinate enter our false stolen report in one of the logs at the outer guard posts,” she said and then gave him a mock scowl.

“In the military we have just one other besides the Captain Athol, and it is he who I speak of,” she replied. She then spanked the horse on the rump and it trotted off towards the road.

Temmit did the same and then joined Renee in an attempt to jog through the snow, heading east and into some trees that were away from the road. After a few turns she slowed down to a walk, with a few extra running steps he caught up to her and she continued their conversation.

“We do however have some important confidantes in some key buildings throughout the city. Each individual is either a former member of TAO or the unnamed resistance group before it.” she said a little out of breath. Temmit looked west through the trees and could see that they still were parallel to South Road and still heading north to the city. Over the next rise he surmised they would see the city lights.

"Hmmm..." Temmit mused. "I would think that there have to be members out there...one would wonder that we didn't keep track of each other year to year, you know?" He asked rhetorically.

"Given the trail of gifted, you might think that there would be an "older" guild...with graduates and outright adults at this point. A cabal of sorts. For instance, you must still know a few folks who graduated last year, and they would know someone who graduated the year before, and so forth. Names anyway."

"For all that we do here at school, I would hope that efforts don't lapse...people don't just stop working...after graduation."

As Temmit contemplated out loud Renee didn’t interrupt, familiar with Temmit’s thought process, she let his ‘out-loud analysis’ and conjecture play itself out.

They walked a few turns and she looked over at him a few times, wondering if he was truly clueless to the obvious or whether he was being coy and now awaiting more specific answers that he so rightfully deserved.